February 6, 2014

Jack of All Trades: a guest post/short story by M.J. Moore, author of "Anomaly"

M.J. Moore is an Australian author with an affinity for horror and dark fiction. Her new short story collection, Anomaly, is out this year and she has stopped by the blog today with one of her stories, "Jack of All Trades." But first, here's a little word from M.J. Enjoy!

When
Pennywise The Clown was unleashed upon the world twenty-eight years
ago, he made millions of people think twice before putting any part
of their person near a drain. I read IT when I was nineteen, old
enough to know there wasn’t really a carnivorous monster dressed as
a harlequin waiting below my shower grate, but the image has stayed
with me ever since. Recently – while taking a shower, oddly enough
– another image came to me: a plug hole with teeth. When I pasted
that image onto the face of a handyman, the humble InSinkErator – a
device that feeds on the things we waste – took on a whole new,
horrible meaning. Here’s Jack Of All Trades, a story from my new
horror anthology, ANOMALY, which is out now on Amazon.
http://amzn.com/B00I3QBEGC

Jack
of All Trades

a
short story by M.J. Moore

The
handyman whistles as he walks down Bellflower Street, slipping fliers
into letterboxes that, like the houses they stand before, would all
be identical if not for the numbers on the front. These near-new
neighbourhoods are all the same – freshly scrubbed kids walking
reluctantly to school, husbands and fathers rushing off to work,
living to work and working to live, all seen off with a wave by wives
and mothers whose only job is to feign satisfaction so as to ensure
that the home and family doesn’t collapse in on itself. But Jack
can spot a dissatisfied woman a mile off. The rancour of living a
scripted life is something they work intensely at hiding. They
camouflage it with Colgate smiles, wash down hard lumps of it with
Lipton’s Tea, and hold it under scalding soapy water until, to the
outside world at least, they once again resemble the bright, pliable
wads of pink plasticine their men think they married. He can smell
the aroma of their sweat as he walks by, wafting out the window on a
cloud of bacon grease, tobacco and floor wax.

The
air around twenty-seven Bellflower Street is thick with it. The
houses sherbet lemon and polar white colour scheme makes it look like
a gigantic, inverted baked Alaska, remaining impossibly prostrate
under the glare of the mid-June sun. The woman of the house is
sitting on the front stoop, having seen off her husband and two
thirds of her children. The youngest child, whom Jack estimates is
perhaps a month or two shy of a year, is sitting on its mother’s
lap and has taken up a fistful of her skirt to chew on, presumably to
sooth its flourishing mouth. As a result of this, the woman is
unwittingly showing her white-cotton-clad purse to all and sundry.

The
agony of the image would be lost on anyone but Jack.

He
stares just long enough to capture her attention, to let her know
exactly what it is he’s looking at, then walks away in silence as
she yanks the cloth from the child’s mouth. She is watching him,
he doesn’t need to look back to know that. Physically, Jack is
what most people would describe in their bullshitty-polite way as
non-descript; plain, in layman’s terms. He isn’t especially
tall, has no more or less muscular bulk than what is required for him
to function, and the thinning crop of colourless hair with which he
was genetically gifted sits uneasily on top of a skull which bears an
uncanny resemblance to a pudding basin. No one would call him ugly,
but they wouldn’t throw themselves at him, either. Unlike many
people lacking in physical notability, Jack does not try to
compensate for this shortcoming with either an overt or a minimal
sense of aestheticism himself. On the surface, most women are the
same - none any prettier or uglier (or plainer) than the next – but
not the Wanting Ones.

The
Wanting Ones are alive. They burn, constantly alight inside. Rock
Hudson is fine to drool over while sitting next to their husband’s
in a darkened cinema, but when it comes to quelling their anger and
desperation, Jack is just the calmative they need; his menthol stare
tells them so. The woman of the house at twenty-seven Bellflower
Street has been ablaze for quite some time; the phone line crackles
in Jack’s ear as she introduces herself.

‘Well…my
insinkerator needs fixing, and I don’t think my husband’s up to
the job, bless him.’

I’ll
bet he isn’t.

‘I’ve
got a few jobs on at the moment...I should be in your area today or
tomorrow at some point; will you be at home?’

'I...I
think I should be...yes.'

Of
course you will be.

'All
right.'

‘Oh…thank
you!’

She
opens the door to him with the baby in her arms.

'Oh,
I wasn't expecting you so soon!'

Her
hair and makeup, perfected to a point where she looks like a young
Grace Kelly, say otherwise. She leads him through to the kitchen and
points sheepishly to the sink. He is unsurprised to find that her
Insinkerator doesn't need fixing.

It’s
brand new.

When
he turns to her, she’s shaking, overcome with anticipation, and
just a touch of fear. He takes the child and places it on the floor,
then picks up its mother and sets her down on the counter. Her
breath is only halfway out when he rips open her dress.

Two
hours later he gets into his car and drives away from twenty-seven
Bellflower Street. Marcy Moreton is still sitting on the kitchen
counter, legs apart. She is staring at the ceiling, smiling, stalled
at the intersection of Living and Consciousness. She is wearing a
different dress when the older kids arrive home from school. The
buttons are done up the wrong way but they, being kids, don’t
notice. She fixes their afternoon snack, milk and brownies, but only
half fills their glasses. The boy starts to protest but she’s
gone.

When
he gets there, the child is in its playpen. She has given him a
bottle and all of his toys and has left the television set on. She
is prepared for him, having abandoned all pretence of modesty. He
carries her to the kitchen table, lays her down and pulls up her
blouse.

This
time, it takes Marcie a full hour to get back into her afternoon
routine. When the kids get home, they find themselves sitting down
to an unopened cookie jar and two empty glasses. The boy starts to
protest, but she’s gone again.

‘Mr
Smiley?’

‘I’ll
be there.’

The
child grins at him with its four teeth by way of a greeting as Jack
walks by, carrying its mother. He bends her over the sink. Marcy
has just stepped back into her underwear and is still tugging at it
when the kids get home. She plonks the cookie jar onto the centre of
the table, no glasses. The boy opens his mouth to protest, decides
against it.

‘Mr…’

‘All
right.’

The
child waves at him with a shiny, drool covered hand as he reaches up
under its mother’s dress and removes her underwear. He steps out
of his own lower vestiges and carries her to the kitchen, where he
sits on a chair and pulls her down on top of him.

The
girl notices as she is sitting down to eat that her mother is
jiggling a more than usual and immediately averts her eyes when she
discovers the reason; her mother’s unadorned behind betrayed by the
lack of a visible knicker line. Marcie haphazardly plonks the cookie
jar onto the table on her way past, and the boy just manages to stop
it toppling over the edge. By now, both children are a little
worried about their mother, but neither dares say anything.

‘Jack.’

‘Yes.’

The
child presses its face up against the bars of its playpen and squeals
at its mother’s visitor, delighted to see his familiar face again.
The washer is thundering away mid-spin cycle, when Jack tells Marcie
to unbutton her housecoat and sets her down on top of it.

The
kids are, inwardly, appalled to find their mother still in her
housecoat when they get home. Marcie picks up the cookie jar,
whizzes past them, and in her haste completely misses the table.

She
says nothing when the ringing stops, letting her breath do the
communicating.

‘Okay.’

Porcelain
shards and cookie fragments are still littering the floor when their
father gets home and the girl, the eldest at all of twelve, is
elected to be the one to talk to their father about the ‘funny’
way their mother is behaving. Her father tells her not to be silly,
that their mother is just feeling a little run down and that she’ll
be herself again in no time.

This
is a lie. He is just as concerned about his wife as the children
are, and knows what he needs to do about it, but he cannot tell the
children about it, particularly his daughter; it would kill her to
see the woman she models herself on from the outside of a padded
cell.

The
child is not in his playpen today. Marcy doesn’t bother explaining
that her husband has taken him to his grandmother’s to give her a
break. Explanations aren’t necessary with Jack, and neither are
excuses or apologies; she shows this by answering the door naked. He
takes her on the kitchen floor, with a little more force than usual,
and when she looks into his eyes, she sees nothing.

It
is pitch black in there.

The
kids go into the kitchen and get their own snacks when they come home
to find their mother, dressed once again in her trusty housecoat, on
the phone. They eat in silence, take their plates and glasses to the
sink, put the cookie jar in the cupboard and the milk in the fridge
and go to their rooms.

An
hour and a half after she first dialled Jacks number, the ringing
stops.

Jack
twirls an exquisite string of pearls around his ring finger, an
identical string to the one Marcie’s mother in law gave her on her
wedding day, and says nothing. She must be the one to ask.

‘What
are you?’

‘I’m
yours.’ He wraps the pearls around the neck of the telephone
receiver, listening patiently.

‘You’re
mine,’ she repeats.

‘But…’
he coaches. He can sense her effort, hear invisible cogs turning in
her brain.

‘But
I’ll never be yours.’

Jack
twists the pearls, slowly, deliberately.

Marcie
mulls something over.

‘So
what am I?’

Jack
lets the dial tone answer for him. He unravels the pearls. Marcy
pads over to the sink, immune to the cold linoleum beneath her feet.
She peers over the sink into the drain. Jack lays back in his
recliner, swinging the pearls back and forth over his face, drawing
out his pleasure. Marcy stares into the void. It is where she came
from, where she belongs; she never should have left it. Jack runs
his fingers over the pearls, savoring their perfection. It is a
perfection born of pain, but not quite enough, not yet. Marcy leans
over the sink, her mother-in-law’s pearls dangling mid-air. Jack
opens his mouth wide. His teeth recede back into his gums like the
top rolling back on a convertible on a pleasant spring day.

Marcy
leans lower. Her right hand is inching up the wall, groping for a
large white button.

Jack
screams as two shimmering metal blades pierce through his gums. He
closes his eyes and hums as the blades spin into motion, his
breathing now a sickening mechanical whir.

Marcy
leans lower still. Her mother-in-law’s pearls graze the lip of the
drain. She closes her eyes. Jack closes his eyes too as he feeds
the pearls to his ravenous metal mouth. At first there is a
succession of shattering crunches, as there should be when a thing of
beauty, hardened and honed by years of suffering is consumed. He
pulls at the necklace, sucking and drooling on it as though it’s
bacon rind, cured in tears and sweat and regret.

Then
the necklace entwines itself around one of the blades. It twists
around Marcy’s neck, yanking her forward like an errant dog. Her
eyes burn, her ears throb, and the last things she hears before she
slips down the drain into the void are her own declining heartbeat
and the dainty approach of her daughters stockinged feet.

Jack
Smiley is spent; feeding off fifteen women in one week does that to a
guy. He sinks into the recliner and drifts off into a well-earned
slumber, secure in the knowledge that the energy he has ingested will
be enough to sustain him until he comes out of hibernation again in
another twenty years or so. He will not dream, for dreams are a
manifestation of the stresses of the everyday world, the fear of
one’s own mortality chief amongst them. Jack Smiley isn’t
mortal; as long as there are neglectful husbands and ungrateful
children, he will live forever.